Thanks very much for writing back. This is certainly not the first time my attempts at humor have been perhaps too offbeat or well-hidden. I find so much about humanity, myself included, that is downright hilarious — that I guess I think it’s enough just to point to it and say, like Puck, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.” Maybe I need to just add “LOL” or “LMFAO” where appropriate, since I can’t find any stupid smiley face emojis on Medium. Which is surely a good thing. Anyhow, thanks for taking a second look. That’s awesome.

I’m also interested in the ways religious institutions survive by indoctrination and coercion, and I also find that brainwashing to be frustrating and saddening. As I’m sure you agree, the persistent, pernicious damage done when religion is weaponized, as it usually is, is tragic, unforgivable, infuriating. And the more history I learn, the worse it gets, since many scholars are now unpacking and revealing even more horrors committed by religious empire-builders, past and present. There is no shortage of those critiques, and this new scrutiny of the role religion has played in murder, oppression, colonialism, genocide, war, power struggles, and dehumanization of the Other is long overdue. I hope that scrutiny will bring sweeping changes in society. I hope.

But: I’ve spent decades working with people who have been spiritual refugees from their own indoctrination and from the savage reality that is the track record of most organized religion. They know that religious teaching can cripple the human psyche by teaching myths as facts and facts as myths, and they want to get over it, get out of it, rise above it and heal. It’s true that some seekers want to replace one limited, overlord god with another, or have a cathartic conversion experience, or relinquish all their personal responsibility to imaginary angels that will help them find a parking spot. It’s the “woo-woo” aspect that grates.

But there still remain thoughtful, rational people who struggle and reflect and explore. They find that even after excising those cancerous accretions of religious dogma, they will still experience an urge to make meaning beyond the immediate. That’s the essence of it. This kind of seeker may, eventually, write into the record what a human soul might be like if it were allowed to be free and unique and fully present in the universe. This is the experience and language I am interested in, for people call this presence all kinds of things: satori; enlightenment; grace; mental health; humanism; awe; grace; wonder; spirituality; humility; or, duh, being fully present. And, with luck, the people who throw off doctrinal restraints and find their own authentic, unique relationship with their Ultimate Concerns will discover that they are not alone.

Some of the progressive communities of seekers that I know of are places where these inquiries are welcomed and supported, without judgment or limits. They are radically unlike the prevailing view of oppressive, fantasy-based, in-group/out-group churches and related institutions. When I write that all the “Nones” need to join forces, it is primarily so that others would please, please respect those seekers and not lump them in with those who use religion to disguise their hate and their ignorance.

I’m aware that for a thoroughly secular individual, any lingering trace of “spirituality” in a person is seen as a critical flaw in their thinking, where the individual wishes to replace reason with non-reason. Certainly that happens; human progress and learning and development are not predictable, linear processes. But I prefer to focus on building connections among diverse thinkers, for I believe those connections strengthen us all. For example, when I listen carefully to the views of many non-believers, I often hear them claiming attributes or experiences like: a sense of wonder at the marvels of the real world and the real universe; a sense of morality they have derived from reason and enlightened self-interest; an acknowledgement that humans are imperfect, and that society needs to radically change; or an understanding that human anxiety about death is natural and powerful, and it is natural to construct a worldview that helps us bear it. Any of these positions could be arrived at rationally, I believe. But maybe this is the intersection: ideas that secularists arrive at rationally, others have intuited some other way. So the seeker could perhaps truthfully say, “That sounds like my understanding, as well. I just got there a different way, and I call it something else.”

Unfortunately, many seekers spoil the whole thing by triumphantly saying, “See — you do believe in God!” Well, crap — now nobody’s happy with that particular conversation, because both people have been insisting that the other use the same language as they do and nobody’s truth has been affirmed as their own. Bummer.

So anyway, you said it yourself: our mileage varies. But I like to think that most good people are at least trying to get someplace where we have a better view.

Or, as they say in Zen Judaism: “Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?”